Google's Eric Schmidt Explains the Problem With Women In Tech, Without Really Meaning To

Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, made a few revealing comments about why America’s tech sector still has so few women and minorities while speaking at the SelectUSA Investment Summit yesterday in Washington, D.C. The thing is, Schmidt wasn’t really trying to explain the tech sector’s problem with women – it just happened as he was describing Google’s business model.

“There’s something about the tech culture, the way we approach it, the incentives, that is driving women away…. Why are they not in tech? I don’t think we know that. We’re working on it,” Schmidt said.

But a few minutes later, Schmidt basically provided an answer to the case of the tech sector’s missing women as he told U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker about Google’s process for finding an investment target. In the case Schmidt was describing, Google had invested in an innovative contact lens that measures blood sugar level for diabetics.

“Now how does that happen?” he said, referring to Google funding the investment. “We knew this fella, he was the right guy, he had the right vision, he fit well in the culture, he was able to recruit people quickly to these teams, and it happened fast. So it’s a combination of culture but especially the technical individual who has the vision.”

Vision and culture sound innocuous, but what Schmidt is describing can easily be seen as an example of “in-group favoritism,” the well-documented tendency for people to favor other people who are similar to themselves. That kind of path dependency means that a group highly educated group of white men – like the founders of Google – will tend to seek out and place their trust in other people like them.

A recent survey by LinkedIn suggested that the tech industry may be more susceptible to this kind of issue than other industries. The survey shows that the computer games, computer and network security, wireless and computer software sectors were among the industries that were most likely to hire someone who was already connected to one of their employees via LinkedIn, suggesting these sectors rely more on personal connections in hiring decisions. This is in part because employees may know firsthand that the new hire has certain necessary technical skills, and partly because the tech industry tends to give generous compensation to employees for referring new hires.

LinkedIn survey

Whatever the reason, the result is a huge discrepancy in the numbers of men and women in some of America's most promising and cutting edge industries -- as this cool visualization of gender disparities in engineering teams in the tech industry shows. When a mostly male and white workforce finds new business opportunities and new hires from their own network of contacts -- fellas they know and that "fit with the culture" -- the result tends to be a relatively homogenous staff.

I am a Washington, D.C.-based writer who covers global economic trends, with a focus on China and India. I spent much of the last decade living and working in China, gaining valuable experience as a writer, editor, analyst, and pajama model. I am currently an analyst at JL W...